


The Rage of Achilles

by Magicath_420



Series: The Classics [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ancient Greece, Angst, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Iliad AU, In Character, M/M, Mutual Pining, Or At Least I Tried, Protective Dean Winchester, Sexual Tension, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:27:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28462371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magicath_420/pseuds/Magicath_420
Summary: Iliad AU! Starring Dean as Achilles, the most feared warrior in Greece, and Cas as Briseis, a captured Trojan who learns there may be more to Dean Winchester than meets the eye.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Series: The Classics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2084787
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, I wasn’t going to write this, because this is a Destiel Iliad AU, and I am an adult with a job who has friends. But then I experienced a moment of true happiness and I was immediately sucked into gay super hell, or as I like to call it, the Supernatural fandom. So enjoy my contribution to s16 of the most show of all time.

“Sing, oh muse, of the rage of Achilles...”

Chapter 1:

Dean stood on top of the chariot, spear held high above his head. The sun glinted off his famous golden helmet, blinding the Trojan troops ahead. The citadel would fall before dusk.

Trojan men with swords rushed at him head-on, determined to die for the sake of a king they’d never met and the kidnapped, enslaved woman he refused to free. Each one that fell brought him one step closer to saving Queen Mary from the tyrant prince, Azazel; Dean felt no remorse killing men who chose to stand and fight for the wrong reasons. 

Sooner or later the Greek troops had broken through the line of Trojan defenders and were standing at the foot of the citadel, a tall, brick building, like a tower in a ballad which imprisons a princess until she is saved by a hero. Sam pulled on their horses’ reigns to bring the chariot to a stop. 

“This is the last defense before the walls of the city itself,” Sam said.

Dean nodded. “Full of soldiers?”

“No,” Bobby answered, coming up from behind them in his general’s chariot, “Women, children, and slaves.”

“What?”

“The Trojans have known they were losing ground on the citadel for a while now. They packed it full of- _offerings_ \- hoping to distract us until they can regroup.”

Sam looked at Dean, horrified. Dean looked at Bobby. 

“They want us to...?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that’s not going to happen,” Sam said sharply. Dean knew why he was so adamant, and he felt the same way. While the three of them were here for the right reasons, there were soldiers in their campaign- as in every campaign- that were there for the spoils of the fight alone. He didn’t want to think of what those men would do with a tower full of defenseless prisoners of war. 

“We’re sending them back to the city.”

“You can’t,” Bobby said. “They closed the walls already, nobody is allowed in or out. You’d only be sending them to the heart of the battlefield.”

Sam cursed.

“So, what are we supposed to do?” Dean asked angrily. “Divide these people up among the men as prizes? Concubines? Slaves?”

Bobby sighed. “The Trojans left us no choice. We have to take them back to camp.”

Sam tried to cut in, “But, Bobby-” 

“Don’t ‘but’ me, boy. I’m not handing them out to the army as war prizes. We’ll keep the families together, find a place for everyone to sleep- _away from the men_ \- and give them some good, honest work to do.”

“That’s slavery,” Dean stated, hard.

“You got a better idea?”

Sam and Dean looked at each other. Sam was starting to look like he agreed; Dean glared at him, but before he could say anything, Sam cut him off preemptively, “It’s war, Dean. At least- at least they’ll be safe with us.”

Dean shook his head. 

“C’mon,” Sam prodded, when Dean wouldn’t move. Dean shook off Sam’s hand on his arm and walked toward the tower without looking at him or Bobby. Sam followed him inside.

The first thing Dean noticed, after fighting through the confusion of the other soldiers and prisoners to get to the dimly lit top room in the tower, was a pair of bright, blue eyes. Standing in the corner, in front of a cowering child, a man with eyes like an ocean was holding a dagger in front of himself. Before Dean could say anything, the man spoke, his voice shaking, but strong. 

“I know who you are,” he said. “Take me. Please. If you let the kid go, I’ll do anything. I’ll go with you, I won’t even fight. _Please_ , spare him.”

“Woah, hey,” Dean said, putting his hands up. He and Sam had been separated a few floors below; he, the man, and the child were the only three in the room. “I’m not going to hurt you. Or the kid. I promise.”

The man looked at him, wild eyes shining out of a dirty, tear-streaked face. 

“What do you want?” he asked warily. 

Dean sighed. This was the hard part. 

“I have to take you back to our camp. Both of you.”

“No, please-” the man started.

“I won’t hurt you,” Dean said, “No one is going to hurt you. Either of you. But it’s not safe out here.”

“And it’s safer as a slave in a camp of drunken Greek soldiers?” the man challenged.

Dean had to admire the amount of courage it must have taken for this guy to mouth off to the most feared man in the opposing army, while standing in front of a child, with only a knife to defend himself. 

“Yes,” Dean answered, praying he wasn’t lying, “The gates of Troy are closed. It’s our camp, or an open battlefield.”

The man shifted his stance, as if weighing his chances of getting past Dean. He didn’t seem to know that much, much crueler men waited outside the door. Dean, however, did know that, and he was tired of watching them hurt people. 

“I give you my word that you’ll be safe with me.” Dean told the man. 

He still didn’t look convinced, but the cornered look in his eye was beginning to give way to a calculating stare.

“What’s your name?” Dean asked.

“...Castiel,” the man said cautiously.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Castiel,” Dean repeated. “Is this your son? What’s his name?”

“No,” Castiel said, “He’s- he was all alone. When they put us all in here, he didn’t have anyone. He must have been one of the other servants’ sons, but, well, not everyone made it out. I- I don’t even know his name. He doesn’t speak our language.”

Dean suppressed a smile that would have been wholly inappropriate for the situation. This man- Castiel- had stood up to _him_ , who was wearing head-to-toe golden armor, and of whose fighting there were songs written about, and he hadn’t faltered once. But when asked about the crying child behind him, he stumbled over his words like a nervous kid in a schoolhouse. Dean found his respect for the man growing by the minute. 

“And you were willing to die to protect him?”

Castiel’s stare turned cold. “He’s a _child_ ,” he spat.

Oh, yeah. Dean definitely liked Castiel. 

Dean smiled, “I know. And I’m not going to let anything happen to him. You have to trust me, Castiel, I’m not your enemy.”

There were screams and scuffling outside the door; the soldiers who cared less were dragging civilians down the stairs like prisoners, instead of the victims they were. 

Castiel looked at the door in fear, and then back at Dean. Then he set his jaw and nodded.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay, I’ll go with you. But the kid stays with me.”

“Deal,” Dean said.

He opened the door behind him, and Castiel walked out, holding his little boy’s arm in a death grip, never taking his eyes off of Dean. The narrow staircase leading out of the tower was chaos as the other soldiers dragged women by their hair and kicked at children who weren’t going fast enough for their liking. Dean seethed; he had _known_ this was going to happen. Why did he ever listen to Bobby?

Dean led Castiel ten steps before his progress was blocked by a group of his least favorite soldiers. As soon as they saw him with a Trojan in tow, they started to laugh. One of them wolf-whistled. 

The man closest to Dean grabbed Castiel roughly by the hair and tilted his head back on an angle. 

“Where’d you find _that_ one?” jeered the soldier who had whistled.

“Didn’t know you were into kids, Winchester!”

“I might just have to borrow the man myself, sometime,” their leader, Gordon, said thoughtfully.

Dean grabbed Castiel by the shirt and pulled him back behind him. “He’s not to share,” Dean said coldly, staring down Gordon with the eyes that had seen a thousand men killed in battle.

Gordon laughed without smiling. Dean glared until he stepped aside, and walked outside, not even realizing he was still dragging Castiel by the shirt until he let him go. Castiel took a shaky breath and kneeled down to his kid’s eye level, trying to console him across the language barrier. Dean looked around for Sam, reluctant to leave the two Trojans by themselves. He finally found his brother in the crowd and waved him over. 

“How’d it go?” Dean asked him.

“About as well as you’d expect. You?”

“Same.” 

Sam grimaced. “Well, that should have been the hardest part. Once we get them back to camp-”

“What, the rest of the men can pick through them?” Dean asked angrily. “C’mon, Sammy, this isn’t going to work. You know it, I know it. There’s no way we can protect fifty unmarried women and fatherless children from an entire army.”

Sam’s eyebrow’s knit together in concentration. “You’re right,” he said slowly, “Unclaimed prisoners will be impossible to protect.”

Dean gestured _yeah, that’s what I’ve been saying_ with his hands. 

“I’m telling Bobby we’re going to have to find another way.”

“Wait! Dean, think about what I just said. _Unclaimed_ prisoners will be in danger. As in, the slaves who don’t belong to anyone.”

“...Right, which is _all_ of them.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Sam suggested. 

It took Dean a second to get what he was saying. 

“You want to try to take every single one of these people for _ourselves_?” Dean asked incredulously.

“It’s the only way to keep them safe.”

“How the hell would we even pull that off?”

“We’re going to have to pull rank.”

“We don’t outrank _everyone_ ,” Dean said significantly.

“Yeah,” Sam huffed. “Cross that bridge when we come to it?”

“That’s a terrible plan.”

“You got a better one?”

Dean sighed. “If one more person asks me that today, I’m going to hit them.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for a brief misunderstanding that leads to a character thinking he is going to be forced into sex when in reality he isn’t.

Back at camp, the soldiers rounded up the prisoners like cattle. Dean did a quick headcount; 103 total, including the children. God, this was going to be fucking impossible. 

Before any of the other men could say anything, Sam cleared his throat and addressed them all together. 

“These Trojans are not for common use,” he said, loudly. “The citadel never would have fallen if not for my brother and I. As the highest ranking soldiers in the battle, we claim the bounty for ourselves.” 

The men erupted into angry shouts and arguments. Sam and Dean let them. There was a careful strategy to be played here, and they couldn’t fight all the men directly. If every soldier who had been in the battle with them rose up now, they’d be overthrown in a heartbeat. 

“That’s not fucking fair!”

_Wait for it._

“You can’t take _all_ the women, who are the rest of us supposed to fuck?”

_Wait for it._

“Fuck you. I’m taking this one.”

 _Now_.

Dean stepped forward, taking out his sword, and swung it down in one, strong motion. The man who had spoken screamed as his hand, severed from his wrist, fell off the fourteen year old girl he had grabbed and hit the ground. 

Dean took the man by the front of his shirt and lifted his feet off the ground, bringing his face close to his own. “Don’t touch my stuff,” he growled. He dropped him.

The man stumbled backwards into the crowd and was dragged away to the medical tent by his friends. The din of the soldiers had fallen from yells to terrified whispers. 

“I said,” Sam repeated, slowly and dangerously, “we claim the bounty for ourselves.”

For one, tense moment, no one moved. Dean prayed to the gods that this would work. And then, very slowly, the men began to walk away, and he was able to herd the Trojans back to his and Sam’s chambers quickly and peacefully. 

Sam and Dean shared a campsite set slightly apart from the others. As the highest ranking foot soldiers from their city state, they lived in a home that was much closer to a palace than a tent. The war, after all, was approaching its tenth year, and they had had plenty of time to build. The palace had huge servants quarters that were almost entirely empty, as Sam and Dean had always refused to take slaves like the other men did. The only people who lived with them were the teenage soldiers who cooked and cleaned to fulfill their military duties, and now, the refugees. When the others had settled down, Dean noticed only Castiel was left standing. Dean tried to catch his eye, but Castiel avoided it at all costs. 

Dean was slightly disappointed, but understood. In the past few hours, he had abducted Castiel, led him through gangs of aggressive soldiers, and cut off a man’s hand in front of everyone; that could be intimidating, he figured. So instead of approaching him, Dean pointed Castiel out to one of the serving boys, and told the boy to make sure that he, specifically, found somewhere warm to sleep.

XXX

Later that night, as Dean was getting ready for bed, he heard voices outside his door. 

“Here,” said one that he recognized as belonging to their newest serving boy, who had only arrived in camp a few weeks ago. Then, after a pause, it said more menacingly, “Go.”

The door opened, Castiel was pushed inside, and the serving boy slammed and locked the door behind him. Castiel tried the door, but it wouldn’t budge. He hit it with his fist and cursed. 

“Castiel?”

“Don’t you fucking touch me,” the man said. 

“What are you-”

“You’re a goddamn coward, you know that?” he continued, turning to face Dean, “You send your fucking child soldiers to bring slaves to your bedchamber _for_ you. You don’t even have the balls to go get us yourselves.”

“Castiel, I-”

“Don’t fucking say my name. I mean it, you Greek bastard. You’re not even saying it right, and if you’re going to- to- don’t pretend you see me as a person.”

“Hey, I’m not going to hurt you,” Dean tried to placate, incredibly confused as to why Castiel was here and why he was so mad at him.

Castiel crossed the room and stood face-to-face with him. He looked Dean straight in the eyes and scoffed.

“Yeah, whatever. Look, if it weren’t for that kid, I’d slit my throat right now, rather than go to bed with you. But he _needs_ me. So,” Castiel glared, not wavering once in fear, voice shaking only out of anger, “just make it quick, and let me go back to him.”

Dean realized all at once what was happening. That Spartan little shit had assumed that Dean was asking him to bring Castiel to _him_ when he told him to find the man a place to sleep. Dean could’ve wrung the kid’s neck.

Dean threw his hands up, his first impulse in trying to appear non-threatening, but instantly regretted it when he saw how hard Castiel flinched away from him. Dean took a step back, more slowly this time, to give the man space.

“Look,” he started slowly, “there’s been a mistake. You’re not a slave, and I’m not going to force you to share my bed.”

Castiel looked back at him like Dean was playing some kind of game, and he couldn’t figure out the rules. 

“Castiel-” the man grimaced slightly- “Okay, I’m not saying that right. How about Cas?”

He only glared at Dean like a caged animal.

“Cas, my brother and I didn’t bring you here to serve us, and we definitely aren’t going to force any of you to do _anything_ you don’t want to do. We- we’re trying to save you.”

Cas tilted his head and squinted at Dean. “You expect me to believe that you, the most fearsome killer in Greece, raided a house of worship, kidnapped the civilians inside, and _cut off one of your own soldier’s hands_ in order to ‘save us’? Out of, what, the goodness of your heart?”

Dean had to admit that it didn’t sound good. 

“Yes,” he said simply, “I mean, I probably wouldn’t believe me, if the situation was reversed. But that doesn’t mean it’s not true.” 

“And what the fuck do you want me to do with that?”

Dean chuckled. “Are you really afraid of me? Cause I gotta be honest with you, buddy, usually prisoners of war don’t talk back this much.”

“I thought you said we’re not prisoners.”

“I thought you said you didn’t believe me.”

Cas glared, absorbing none of Dean’s humor. The hate of an enemy soldier suddenly burned in his eyes again. “I’ve fought far more fearsome things than you, Dean Winchester. And I’ve always lived to tell the tale.”

A shiver ran down Dean’s spine. This downtrodden, unarmed Trojan standing in Dean’s bedchamber, surrounded by Greek guards, was absolutely terrifying. 

“This isn’t a fight,” Dean managed.

“It’s always a fight,” Cas said darkly. 

It was then that Dean noticed that Cas was holding himself gingerly, and seemed to wince in pain whenever he moved. 

“Are you hurt?” 

“No.”

“Dude, you look like you can barely stand,” Dean said. It was so clear that Cas was in pain that Dean couldn’t believe he didn’t notice it right away. He guessed that it was because the man seemed so fearsome, that Dean hadn’t even considered that someone could have hurt him. “Sit down.”

Cas didn’t move. 

Dean took a slow, measured step closer to him. Cas didn’t flinch, but he held Dean’s eyes like a challenge. 

“C’mon, man,” Dean said, softer this time. “Let me help you.”

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why help me here? Why not send me to the med tent, if you’re so concerned for my well-being?”

Dean sighed. “They- uh- they’re not going to treat a slave.”

“But you will?”

“Yes.”

“Because- because, why? You’re different?”

“ _Yes_.”

Cas squinted at him for a few more seconds, and then, slowly, carefully, sat down on the edge of his bed.

“It’s- it’s my back. I took some extra food, for the kid. I thought he looked skinny. One of the other refugees had a knife.”

“He stabbed you?”

“More like... slashed. It’s a long gash, but it’s shallow. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay. But I still have to clean it.”

Cas nodded. 

Dean sat down next to him and put his hands on his shoulders, gently turning him away so that Dean could see his back. Cas’s shirt was soaked in blood, and shredded to pieces. 

“I’m going to have to cut your shirt off. Is that okay?”

Cas hesitated. “I don’t want you to touch me.”

Dean’s heart broke a little bit. “I- I’ll try not to. But, Cas, this is going to get infected if you don’t let me treat it. I swear to all the gods, I only want to help.”

Cas swallowed, and eventually nodded. Dean took out his knife and cut the rest of the shirt, gingerly peeling it off of Cas’s back. Cas hissed as the dried blood pulled at the wound. 

“Sorry, sorry. Here.”

Dean dipped a cloth into the bowl of water by his bed and gently cleaned the skin around the wound, trying his best not to hurt Cas. He had been right; it was shallow, thankfully, and it seemed to have stopped bleeding a few hours ago. Dean smeared some medical herbs on a bandage and pressed it softly onto Cas’s back.

“Here,” he said, handing Cas the rest of the bandage so he could wrap it around his chest by himself, minimizing Dean’s touch. He helped Cas pass it from one hand to another behind his back to finish the wrapping, but he didn’t touch him again. As soon as he was done, Dean stood up. 

Cas wouldn’t meet his eyes. He held the scraps of his old shirt in his hands. 

“Take one of mine,” Dean said. He crossed to his wardrobe and offered Cas a soft, linen shirt. 

Cas took it and quickly pulled it over his head. “Thanks,” he said quietly. 

“Yeah, anytime,” Dean said a little awkwardly.

Cas got up and walked to the door. It was still locked.

“Can you- um- open this?”

“Oh, yeah, of course. Sorry.”

Dean hurriedly unlocked the door and opened it for Cas.

Cas looked up at him in the doorway before he left. 

“I’ll, um, see you around?” Dean said lamely.

Cas narrowed his eyes. “Yes, Dean, you will see me around. I live in your slave quarters.”

“They’re not-”

“They are now,” Cas said.

Dean... couldn’t really argue with that. Cas walked away. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah so if you haven’t figured it out yet, Sam is technically Patroclus here. And yeah, yeah, I know, Achilles and Patroclus best love story of all time yada yada. I read Song of Achilles, I didn’t particularly love it. I like the (fully consensual) master/slave dynamic, so I chose Briseis to be Cas instead. Also, you can’t tell me Sam and Dean’s canon relationship isn’t batshit enough to pull off *at least* the version of Achilles and Patroclus I was taught in English class in my Catholic high school. But anyway, yeah, this isn’t ever going to be wincest, I just like the Iliad.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a super quick transition chapter, I don’t even think it’s 200 words. Technically you could probably skip it if you don’t care about the logistics of the plot.

Tensions were high in camp these days. Every single Trojan refugee in Sam and Dean’s care was a point of friction with the other men, and so was everything they did. Neither he nor Sam, Dean knew, regretted the decision they had made, but even Dean was starting to think they could have probably gone about it better. As it was, they had a lot of damage control to do.

“What the fuck did you two idjits do yesterday?” Bobby asked, walking into the common area without knocking.

Dean looked over at Sam, who shifted guiltily in his chair. 

“Saved lives.” Dean said strongly. 

“Oh, cut the crap.”

“Sorry,” Dean mumbled.

“The entire army is on the verge of mutiny against you two. Did you really think this would work?”

Sam shrugged timidly. “Yes?”

“Well it won’t.”

“It has to, Bobby,” Dean said. “If not for our sakes, then theirs.”

Bobby sighed. “I’m going to talk to the others. Don’t do anything else stupid while I’m gone.”

He stalked out the door. 

Sam sighed. “He’s right, you know. We have to do _something_ about this.”

“What do you want to do, Sam? Auction them off?”

“No, but we could try a little harder to keep up appearances.”

“What do you mean?”

“The men are angry _now_. Think of how much angrier they would be if they knew we weren’t even putting the slaves to work.”

“They’re not slaves!”

“Except they _are_ , Dean. Because it’s the safest thing for them to be right now. So we have to get them jobs, or they won’t be slaves anymore, they’ll be enemies. And all the men out there have taken blood oaths to kill any enemy they come into contact with.”

Dean grumbled.

“Do you want them to be safe, or not?”

“Fine,” he said. “But they get to pick their own jobs.”

“Fine,” Sam said. “But you have to tell Bobby.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for mild descriptions of the Trojans being abused by the Greeks. Some quick mentions of sexual harassment. No rape.

It was fine. The Trojans divided themselves up between laundry, food, and cleaning. The kids that were too young to work were watched by the handful of women that were too old to work, and a few of the refugees even turned out to have some education and job skills. Castiel, for example, had been a physician in Troy; he ended up in the medical tent. 

Tensions in the camp calmed, and the war raged on. Men came through the medical tent in a steady flow of blood and broken bone, and Castiel quickly learned how to dress a wound while dodging a punch. The Greek soldiers had been worn down into blunt instruments by a decade of warfare: a Trojan was a Trojan was a Trojan. It didn’t matter that Castiel was helping them, or dulling their pain, or even saving their lives; at best, he was a slave, and at worst, he was the enemy. 

Dean himself was in the medical tent often enough. When he wasn’t there for his own stitches, he was visiting his men to keep up morale. Castiel watched from a sleeping patient’s bedside one day as Dean walked through the tent, shaking hands and clapping shoulders. Castiel still couldn’t figure out the Greek general. Dean Winchester had slaughtered thousands of Castiel’s people. He had cut down brothers, fathers, sons, entire bloodlines on battlefield after battlefield, never resting. His loyal charioteer, his brother Sam, had driven them both through rivers of Trojan blood, the same blood that pumped in Castiel’s veins. Yet he sat with his soldiers in their pain, cheerful without being dismissive, empathetic without pity, and he told them that everything was going to be okay. He told them they had fought with honor, and that he was proud to call them his Myrmidons. 

And, perhaps most puzzlingly of all, Dean spoke to the Trojan slaves in the tent the same way. He knew all of their names, assigning nicknames to the ones he couldn’t pronounce, rather than continuing to maul them on his Greek tongue. He asked them questions about their patients, listening to the Trojans’ diagnoses and advice and nodding seriously, happy to submit to their superior wisdom. He never once seemed angry when a patient wasn’t improving as quickly as he would have liked, only sad. He never once blamed the Trojans for a wounded soldier’s death. 

Castiel was suspicious, but he was the only one. The other refugees flocked to Dean, and his brother, like moths to a flame (or perhaps a more apt analogy would be, “like freezing children to a lone campfire in the wilderness”). When the brothers weren’t around, the Greeks were cruel masters; none of the refugees could remember the last time they went a whole day without being hit, kicked, or spit on. The women had it the worst, as women always do; the Greek soldiers knew better than to lay with another man’s prize, especially when that man was their boss, but that didn’t stop their prying eyes and wandering hands. But these were Greeks, after all; the women weren’t their only prey. 

Castiel’s days became a blur of bearing insult and treating injury. A man limped into the tent, carrying another man over his shoulder; he dropped his comrade on a bed and grabbed the nearest Trojan- Castiel, this time- by the collar, spitting on him as he screamed in his face for his help. Another man was wheeled in on a cart with a bone sticking out of his arm, and when Castiel bent down to look at it, one of the soldiers grabbed his ass and laughed. The Greeks in charge of the tent beat Castiel and the other Trojans to make them move faster, work better, or sometimes, just out of frustration. And still, the medical team was considered lucky among the refugees; there were much worse jobs. 

Even if some suspicion of the general remained, Castiel looked forward to seeing Dean in the tent. The other Greeks went easier on the Trojans when Sam or Dean was around, knowing they disapproved of the abuse. And besides, even Castiel had to admit that Dean was charming. He didn’t seem to have the inflated ego that the other generals did; he carried himself like an equal to everyone, from his soldiers to his slaves. 

(And yes, they were slaves- even if Dean didn’t like it when Castiel called them that, Dean’s fantasy of saving the Trojan refugees had long ago fallen to the reality of their daily lives. It was only at home, at the palace, that they were people. And a person who is only a person for 8 hours a day isn’t a person at all; once one’s humanity becomes conditional, it is lost.)

“How’s Benny’s infection, Cas?” Dean asked late one night, sitting next to his friend’s bed long after the soldiers were all in from the battlefield, and it was quiet in the tent, save for a few patients’ low conversations at its other end. 

“Better, sir,” Cas answered on autopilot, immersed in trying to scrub a day’s worth of blood off his hands.

“I told you not to call me ‘sir’.”

“Sorry, sir.”

Dean stood up and Cas flinched away on instinct. “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t- I’m sorry.”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Dean laughed, “I was just getting up to get you another basin for your hands. I think that one is more blood than water at this point.”

Cas took a shaky breath as Dean handed him a new, clean basin, and didn’t meet his eyes. 

“I wasn’t going to hurt you,” Dean said quietly.

Cas shuddered. It had been a long day.

“Thank you. For the water. And your friend is fighting that infection fiercely, he should be back on his feet in a few days.”

“Thank you, Cas,” Dean said, “For everything. You’ve saved our lives- my friend’s lives- more times than I can count.”

Cas turned away. His eyes stung with tears that he’d been holding back for weeks. “Greek lives,” he said.

“What?”

“I save your Greek lives and you get up and kill my people the next day. Everyone I’ve ever known is inside those walls, Dean, did you ever think of that?” 

(Pressure built up inside of a container will exit through the path of least resistance. Anger built up inside of a slave will be taken out upon the master he is least afraid of.)

“And you thank me. You _thank_ me. You smile and you wave and you make your little jokes and you tell us we can sleep wherever we want, and you think that just because you’re not taking us to bed, you’re treating us like people.”

Cas turned around and stepped into Dean’s personal space.

“You make no fucking mistake about my place in this camp, Winchester. I am your slave. I do not have free will. I am not choosing to help you. I treat your soldiers because my other option is putting a dagger through my heart, and I will not allow any more Trojan blood to be spilt on this land if I can help it.”

“You think I want to kill?” Dean asked dangerously. “You think I get up every morning to see my friends pull on dented armor because I want to? You think I stand in the fields, covered in so much blood that I can’t tell if it’s mine or not anymore, for the fucking hell of it?” 

“I think you’ve been doing it for a decade whether you like it or not.”

“Yeah, I know that! Believe it or not, I know exactly how long I’ve been in this fucking war, Cas. My brother was 18 when we got here. He grew up on these battlefields, watching people die, checking to see which flag they stood under before deciding if he could mourn or not. You think I don’t know the cost of this fucking war?”

“Oh, yes, please, tell me. Tell me the great and terrible costs of the war _you_ wage on my people.”

“This isn’t about your _people_ ,” Dean spat, “This is about your king.”

Cas laughed meanly. “Yes, right, our king, how could I forget. You’ve slaughtered entire families and worn their gold to your own temple on your feast days because of-”

“Because Azazel can’t do whatever he wants, just because he’s royalty! Because our queen didn’t deserve to be kidnapped, and she doesn’t deserve to be held like a prisoner!” Dean yelled, “Your people tell stories about her beauty. You tell the stories of how she was born of our love goddess and how she’s irresistible, and how Azazel only did what any man would have done. You tell stories about defending your home when all you’re defending is a sad, pathetic coward who won’t even come out and fight for himself. You want to blame someone for your city’s fate? Blame your fucking king.”

“My king didn’t cut a thirteen year old’s throat today,” Cas spat. Dean’s eyes widened.

“How did-”

“We have our ways of getting news.”

Dean dropped Cas’s gaze. “He had a bow aimed at my brother.”

“Your brother had a sword to his father’s throat.”

“His father gutted my best friend.”

They met eyes again, both thinking the same thing: _I could do this all night_.

Dean dropped Cas’s eye first, sitting down. Cas returned to washing off his hands. For a minute, neither of them spoke. 

“Do you have family?” Dean asked, finally.

“I did,” Cas said softly. “But that was a long time ago.”

His words hung heavy in the air between them.

“Was it-”

“No,” Cas said, “A plague. I’m from a village about 50 miles from here. A few years before the war started, a plague wiped out- well, pretty much everyone. I came to Troy for work.”

“So you’re not even Trojan.”

Cas sighed. For years, he had struggled for equal treatment in Troy. The city hadn’t wanted him at first, but when the fighting started, all of their words for him- _immigrant, foreigner, ghetto rat_ \- had faded from the lexicon. There was only Greek, and not Greek. “I am now.”


	5. Chapter 5

He and Cas got along a little better, after that. Something unspoken had passed between them that night, something about the nature of war and the nature of the men trapped within it. Neither of them saw the other as an enemy, anymore.

As the days wore on, Dean spent more and more time in the med tent. The Trojans had called in reinforcements from gods know where and the Greeks were getting their asses kicked, and all Dean could do was fetch water and clean towels. Cas was damn good at his job, though; he could stitch five men without pausing, using the same needle (which was perfectly sanitary because illness comes from Apollo, not other people’s blood, because that would be ridiculous). There was more than one day where he and Dean were back to back for hours, applying tourniquets before men could bleed out and cleaning wounds before infection could set in. They began to work as a team, anticipating each other’s movements and communicating with a glance across the crowded tent. Cas held a man down while Dean amputated his leg, and when the dust settled that night, Dean handed Cas a drink and asked him if he’d seen the light leave the man’s eyes right before he passed out. _No_ , Cas said. _I closed my eyes after I heard him call out for his mother._

Dean had made a lot of friends in a lot of trenches over the years, but he’d never met a prisoner of war who smiled when he saved the enemies’ lives. He asked Cas about it, late one night, months after they’d argued over it the first time. They were leaning up against each other’s backs on a hospital bed- Dean was facing his sleeping, injured men; Cas was facing the ocean. _I really don’t see it that way anymore_. Cas had said, leaning his head back on Dean’s shoulder and looking up at the stars. _After you’ve held a man’s intestines in your hands, and managed to sew them back inside, letting him live one more day so he can say goodbye to the man he loves... you don’t really see him as Greek, anymore. You just see him as a person._ Dean would’ve agreed if his brain hadn’t short-circuited from Castiel’s warmth, so close to his face. It would be so easy, Dean thought. Right now, it’d be so easy to turn his head to the side...

Suddenly, Dean remembered the first night that Cas was here in camp. He remembered that despite the easiness he felt around Cas, and the lives they’d saved together, and the way his head fit perfectly on Dean’s shoulder like it was made for it- despite all of that, at the end of the day, Cas was a slave. And Dean was royalty. So Cas couldn’t say no to him, not really. Which meant Dean could never ask him a question.

If he wasn’t a soldier, maybe Dean could’ve moped around about that for a little while. But as it was, he didn’t have time. Because one misstep on the battlefield, one faltered step, one bad aim, and the world would end. And Dean knew that, of course- he’d seen enough people die to know that- but he didn’t truly understand it until dusk on the summer solstice, when the setting sun got in his eyes, and he threw a spear at a Trojan archer, missed, and watched an arrow fly straight into Sam’s heart.

Time stopped. Or maybe it sped up, or maybe Dean just ceased to exist within it altogether- the only thing he knew was that he was holding Sam against his chest, and Sam was crying, _actually_ crying like a little boy, and Dean was trying to stop the blood and all of a sudden, Cas was there. And when Dean saw Cas, something in him restarted, and some instinct kicked in and he laid Sam down on a bed and grabbed a needle and thread. He was trying to thread the needle with shaky hands when Cas pushed him out of the way and grabbed the shaft of the arrow. 

“Dean, hold him down.”

Cas pulled the arrow out and immediately replaced it with a towel to stop the bleeding. Dean held him still in a way which he hoped was comforting until Sam finally, mercifully passed out from the pain.

“Get me crushed Cyprus leaves.”

Dean couldn’t move. All he could do was stare at all the fresh blood on his little brother, and focus on the steady rise and fall of his chest, as if it would stop if Dean looked away for even a second, if he even blinked-

“Dean. Dean! Hey!” 

Something hit Dean in the chest, hard. He looked up to see Cas standing too close to his face with his hand raised in a fist. “Crushed Cyprus leaves. For the bleeding. _Now_.”

And just like that, Dean was back in reality. He grabbed the salve from the other side of the tent and handed it to Cas with herbs to prevent infection and something for the pain. Dean took out his knife and cut Sam’s shirt so that they could see the wound better, and dizzying relief hit him; the arrow went through Sam’s _shoulder_ , not his heart. He had a shot. 

Cas finished treating the wound and brought Dean a bowl of water and a towel to clean around the area to make sure that it wouldn’t get infected after the salve wore off. Cas shooed the rest of the concerned soldiers away, leaving only him, Dean, Sam, and a few sleeping patients in the tent as darkness fell. 

Dean tenderly cleaned blood, sweat, and dirt off of Sam while he slept. He felt Sam’s chest rise and fall underneath his hand and he tried to calm his still-shaking hands, terrified to hurt him further. The towel, originally white, was a dull copper now.

Cas sat down next to Dean and gently placed his fingers on the torn skin next to the wound. He nodded. 

“His skin is cool,” Cas said, “He’s going to be okay.”

Dean breathed a choppy sigh of relief and sat back, pulling the blanket up to Sam’s chin. The sun had completely set now, and it was chilly out; he didn’t want him to be cold.

“You saved his life.”

“I’ve saved many of your soldier’s lives, Dean,” Cas dismissed.

“Yeah, but- you saved _his_ life, Cas.”

Cas inclined his head at Dean with a smile in his eyes. “You helped, you know.”

Dean gave a short, self-deprecating laugh. “Helped? I froze. I was in your way.”

“No,” Cas shook his head, “Love is never in the way in medicine. Most physicians think that it is, but those men have forgotten what medicine is in the first place. A desperate loved one at a patient’s bedside should steady a doctor’s nerves- it’s a symbol of all the forces of the universe that work through our hands to tip the scales of fate.”

Dean smiled a little bit.

“I bet you say that to all the boys.”

“I’ve never said that to anyone.”

Dean looked up from Sam for the first time. Cas was squinting and tilting his head a little bit. Every single star in the sky was reflected in his bright blue eyes, and Dean understood for the first time why his people had traced constellations and named them, all those years ago.

“I know how much you care about your brother,” Cas whispered, “I’m glad he’s okay.”

“Me, too.”

“I’m sorry that I hit you.”

Dean laughed. “You’ve got a hell of an arm.”

Cas shrugged sheepishly.

“It’s okay.”

“I guess you owe me a punch, huh?”

Dean gently cupped Cas cheek in his palm. “Cas, buddy, I told you: I’m never going to hurt you.”

“I... believe you.”

“Yeah, I hope so.”

“No, I mean- the last few times you said that, I figured it was a line or something. But I _punched_ you, in front of all your men, and you thanked me.”

“I needed to be punched.”

Cas shook his head and smiled.

“You’re really never going to hurt me,” Cas said in wonder.

Dean’s heart broke a little bit, that this had been so hard for Cas to believe. 

And then each broken piece grew three times its original size, because Cas leaned forward and kissed him. 

Dean’s breath caught in his throat- Cas’s lips were soft against his own and if Dean was standing, his knees would’ve gone weak. Cas pulled away far too soon and smiled at him. Dean smiled back hesitantly.

”Cas, are you sure?”

”Yes.”

”I mean, really sure. Because you- you’re- I have a lot of power, here, Cas. And I don’t want you to feel like you’re- like you’re only here to serve a purpose, or something.” Dean cringed. His own phrasing left a bad taste in his mouth. “Cas, what I’m trying to say is that-”

”Dean, did you not hear a _word_ I just said?”

”No, I did, I just- are you _sure_?”

Cas kissed him again. “Yes.”

”Okay,” Dean breathed, “Okay.”

He took Cas’s face in both hands, and kissed him for real.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos make my day!


End file.
